Students investigate African American culture by reading aloud an African folk tale and illustrating the tale. They use their illustrations to create a book or a bulletin board that retells the folk tale.

Here is an outstanding series of lessons on journalism, writing newspaper articles, and writing editorials. This type of writing has long-been neglected in our schools, so this collection of writing activities is most-valuable. Along...

Tenth graders examine the artistic legacy of trains by comparing the representations of trains in the painting of Turner and the photographs of Terry Evans. They write an essay, story or poem using their own observations of trains,...

Students choose a sport and promote a real or imaginary team by creating press releases, business cards, and ads or commercials.

Students write and illustrate a story to describe the habitat and life cycle of a selected animal. They write and publish their story, and create a picture of the animal on a wooden board.

Students read and analyze the novel, Maniac McGee. They answer discussion questions, read the short story "Thank You, M'am," by Langston Hughes, and conduct Internet research on genealogical websites to analyze their first and last names.

Class groups assume the identity of one of the primary human characters in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They create a body biography that identifies the most important traits of their character, translate these traits into...

Students brainstorm all the possible scenarios that would help them tell a story in detail with the whole class and with partners. They create web outlines to create a name story and then illustrate it with creative grammar usage and...

Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The...

Explore emotions associated with moving to a new home with young learners. First they listen to the books Painted Words/Spoken Memories by Aliki and Going Home by Eve Bunting. Then they are invited to share their experiences as well as...

Students examine the lives of the Aboriginal peoples of Saskatchewan. In this talking stick activity, students discover dance, art, music, and traditions of the First Nations people.  Students design and create a talking stick to...

Review the basics when it comes to grammar. Each slide provides learners with examples and definitions of one of the eight parts of speech. A great resource to keep handy for review, to clear up confusion, or to introduce the topic....

Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass serves as the anchor text for a lesson on symbolism. Readers use the provided worksheets to examine the symbols in the novel as well as in the world around them.

Students study the letter names for the treble clef and create words using the letters that represent the lines and spaces on the staff.

Is trickery ever justified? Is it okay to steal from someone who has stolen from you? Puss, from Puss in Boots, and Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk, might have some ideas about these ethical questions. After listening to a series of...

Students create a time line of their lives from the perspective of 50 years in the future.

Students explore the issue of racial profiling and post their conclusions to a youth message board. They research the issue of racial profiling and post their thoughts to a message board.

Students read and discuss the poem "In Flanders Fields," then write poems evoking images of peacetime. They practice the techniques of writing poetry while using textual imagery to create visual images.

The ABC book format is used to organize information found in a Holocaust research project. Class members use the library and/or online resources to collect information and organize their findings under key terms, places, or names. Before...

Quotation marks are the focus of this resource. In it, youngsters discover how to correctly use punctuation marks. It is meant to be carried out over a three-day period. You could shorten it, but I wouldn't. The activities are...

Use photographs to teach young special education or speech young scholars how good speech looks, as well as sounds. Kindergarteners are photographed making the F, TH, W, R L, and S sounds. They then use the images to identify each sound...

Help your young writers stay engaged with their writing through the practical use of a thesaurus. They work to reinforce the use of synonyms as a way of making writing more interesting and to determine word meaning by finding synonyms....

Students review the people, places, and events of a particular decade of the 20th Century. They write a report about that decade and create a booth of memorabilia, music, dress, pictures and other artifacts representing the time period.

Use formatting to organize an explanatory essay after comparing and contrasting expository and narrative genres. Young writers explore expository writing by employing prewriting techniques and graphic organizers to plan an essay. This is...